The Snells: Home, Sweet Home

Time sure flies when you are having fun! Since our last post, we have added 2 babies to our family, celebrated 7 years of marriage, and have moved half way across the world! Yes, that's right, we moved to Jubail, Saudi Arabia. Last Wednesday (March 1st), the five of us headed to the airport, along with 10 checked suitcases, 6 carry on suitcases, a stroller, and 3 carseats. It was quite the site to see!! Our first flight was Houston to Doha, Qatar, which lasted 14 and 1/2 hours. This was Kjerstin's first flight ever...might as well start off big, right?! We were fortunate enough to be in business class, which made the flight so easy! The non stop food, personal tv, and spacious leg room sure made the flight very comfortable! They even came by and made "beds" for us when we were ready to go to sleep. Soren had a blast watching Cars and Cars2 and fell asleep very easily. Elsa was getting a little restless, so we gave her some melatonin to help her calm down. Within half an hour, she was passed out on her bed snoring away. Guess the melatonin really worked!!! We landed in Doha, and had about a 2 hour connection, which actually went by really fast. We had to go through a security checkpoint, which took a little while. By the time we found our next gate and went to the bathroom, we only had about 20 minutes until we boarded the plane. Our second flight was Doha to Dammam, Saudi Arabia, which was about 40 minutes long. Once off the plane, we had to walk quite a ways to get to customs. Ryan had heard that the customs line can be anywhere from 20 minutes long to 3 hours long, depending on which planes have landed before you. We were hoping it would be closer to the 20 minutes long, since we had been traveling for about 20 hours at this point! We knew meltdowns were coming, so the faster the better! Thankfully, it went pretty quickly! We got through customs and headed to find our luggage, which was waiting for us in the baggage area. All of our suitcases made and so we headed to find our drivers, who would take us to Jubail! Once the kids were loaded up in the SUV, we drove about an hour to our compound, and finally got to see our new HOME!!! Although it was midnight local time, we thought it would be good to go for a quick walk to let the kids burn off some energy. We came back home, got the kids ready for bed, and we all crashed! It was such a relief to be home and to know we had survived our first long trip!!! Everyone did great and we are so glad to finally be together as a family after a long 2 months! Home, sweet home!!!